City Living

The Advantages Of Being A Country Boy

I sometimes chuckle when I read something with advice on where to meet women or unique date ideas. It’s always something like, “Try approaching women at the dog park!” or “Take her to a museum or comedy club instead of dinner and a movie!” I laugh not because they’re bad ideas (they aren’t), but because a substantial chunk of the population is reading that and thinking “What the f*ck is a dog park?” The media naturally directs itself at city dwellers, because that’s where most of the world resides. Unfortunately, that does little for readers in rural areas looking for something they can relate to.While I now call the Washington, DC, area home, that wasn’t always the case. I grew up on five acres of land tucked into the woods of Gloucester County, in eastern Virginia. Getting anywhere, and I mean anywhere, meant a 15-minute drive. There was one high school and two bars, and only one of them was really worth going to. Making left turns during the summer was particularly perilous due to the height and abundance of corn stalks. I recall that when MapQuest first gained popularity, no one found it all that useful at first because a) some of us still had dial-up Internet, making it a time consuming endeavor, and b) it gave you distances in miles rather than minutes.

Speaking of maps, if my parents ever moved, I’d be sh*t out of luck, because most of the roads in that town don’t show up on a GPS. I’d be all right if I could find someone to give me a set of directions that consisted of: “Head down xx road for about 10 minutes, bearing right on xx road for five minutes and then making your first left off the paved road.” I remember in high school a lot of people skipped class to go check out the new Wal-Mart because it was rumored to be the third-largest on the East Coast. So what I’m saying is, I’m intimately familiar with the realities of small-town living.

While country life undoubtedly has its shortcomings, I wouldn’t change a thing about my youth. Having no one around with nowhere to go required that I find creative ways to entertain myself, and you probably wouldn’t be reading this (or anything of mine) if I’d had a whole neighborhood full of other kids to distract me.

Rural life forces you to be resourceful in other ways. Because repairmen of any kind were usually neither affordable nor accessible, when something broke, it usually meant that my father (and me, in whatever capacity I could offer) was fixing it. Coming up through school with the same set of people every year in the same unchanging town meant you had to get pretty good at making conversation, because it’s not like you had a lot of outside stimulus providing new conversation topics. You also had to learn patience on account of those long commutes. The inherent lack of choice in retail options (the nearest mall was at least 45 minutes away) went a long way in staving off materialism. There’s either something that meets your needs or there isn’t, so there’s not much point in fretting over which thing is best. Get the thing that works, and if they don’t have one, figure something out. Materialism still existed, of course, in the form of boat, truck or hunting-gear envy, but the general lack of choice taught you to appreciate what you have without tying your identity to possessions.

And here’s the good news for any countryfolk considering a move to the big city. All of these traits lend themselves just as well, if not better, to city life. You’re unlikely to find yourself being picky and quibbling with your friends over which bar to go to, when back home your only options were either the town’s solo watering hole or a bonfire in the middle of a field. Chicks love a guy who can fix things around the house, work a grill and still hold up their end of a conversation, but that’s not such useful information for the man currently living in a place where the nearest museum or comedy club is two hours away. Of course there’s nothing wrong with living in a rural area and it does have plenty going for it, but for someone who wants a more stimulating, fast-paced lifestyle, it does present some challenges, and a move to the city might be something to consider. The internet gets nearly all the credit it deserves for opening up certain aspects of life and culture to places that otherwise might not have access to it. If you live in a town where everyone knows everybody, an online dating site is a godsend for people looking to branch out and diversify. Nicer clothes, booze and grooming products are all just a click away. That kind of stuff can be life changing for a man tied down to a small town. But for a young man with no obligations, I’d ask, why not give city life a try? I realize it’s not as simple as that, but if you’re not married and just milling around your hometown because that was your default option after college, what’s stopping you from applying for jobs in the nearest city? I know that when I was growing up, my friends and I kind of used that as a motivation. Not that we didn’t love the place where we grew up, but we were determined that we were “destined” for something greater. I think it’s a lot easier for a kid to cultivate that kind of ambition driving down a desolate country road at night than staring out the bedroom of an Upper East side highrise.Is city living for everyone? No, absolutely not. But it is worth trying, because it’s hard to know what you’re missing until you’re living it. Besides, your rural resourcefulness will come in handy (you can find places to fish and hike in almost any city). Worst-case scenario, if you don’t like it, you can always head back home.